Tundra and Lightning

A big storm develops around Toyota's entry into all-American NASCAR.

All seven Toyota truck teams test together. And they all share information, both on and off the track, as seven Toyota engineers scurry from truck to truck, tracking chassis performance, suspension design, aerodynamics, kinematics, tire modeling—the works.

Says White: "We'll boil it all down to a few paragraphs that hopefully tell the crew chiefs, 'This is what you need to do to go faster.'"

In truth, White had more to do with designing TRD's integrated approach than anyone from Japan. This writer did not see a single Japanese engineer or executive, although a number did come to Daytona in February. Another group went to the race at Richmond last fall, where they got into a beer-chugging contest at a tailgating party and drank magaritas mixed with a gas-powered weed whacker (powered by a Honda, to their chagrin).

Broadcaster Ray Dunlap, who covers the sport for the Speed Channel, says, "Toyota is going to revolutionize the way they do things here in NASCAR, not only in the truck series, but also eventually in the Busch and Nextel Cup series."

"They're just copying what Holman and Moody did in the '60s," counters Robin Pemberton, field manager of Ford racing.

Says Terry Laise, GM NASCAR field engineer: "If they're very, very successful with that approach, it will make it more difficult to compete with them without having a more integrated program. But time will tell."

In any event, the arrival of Toyota as a significant presence in NASCAR racing has been one of the most interesting developments of the early 2004 season and has generated unprecedented interest in NASCAR's third-largest national racing series.

"It's another twist not only to the truck series but also to NASCAR," says veteran Geoffrey Bodine, who races a Chevy truck. "What's next? There are a lot of rumors. Maybe Nissan? Honda eventually? So it's something that's good for the sport."

Toyota, the first import automaker ever to race in NASCAR, and the first new manufacturer to join up since the 1950s, started its NASCAR program six years ago, but it was so small that no one paid any attention. A little-known fact is that Toyota already owns one NASCAR national championship.

In 1998, TRD, headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, launched a below-the-radar $200,000-a-year program in the NASCAR Dash Series for smaller four- and six-cylinder cars. Last year, Celica driver Robert Huffman won the final series title for Toyota. (NASCAR stopped sanctioning the series at the end of 2003.)

Toyota's expansion into the truck series is due in part to the collapse of CART open-wheel racing, but it also corresponds to a massive Toyota marketing program to make and sell more Tundra trucks in America. In 2003, 9.6 percent of all vehicles sold here were Toyotas, including the top-selling car, the Camry. And although Toyota recently displaced Ford as the world's second-largest carmaker, Toyota trucks claim only about four percent of America's large-truck market, whereas the Ford F-series commands more than 37 percent.

Toyota makes all the Tundras it sells in the U.S. at a plant in Princeton, Indiana. But in 2006, Toyota will open a second, $800 million Tundra plant in San Antonio that will more than double the current availability of its trucks here.

In joining NASCAR, Toyota hopes to begin to tap into some of that deeply felt brand loyalty that hard-core NASCAR fans are famous for—and that marketers lust after. But the fight for those fans could be as tough as the battles on the track.

"It's a large market, and we're on top," says Ford Racing's Greg Specht. "And the truck series is really a manufacturer's series. NASCAR's surveys have identified 75 million fans, with 40 million identified as hard-core, who are extremely loyal to a given brand. But the other 35 million really don't have brand loyalty yet. Those are the fans we're going after."

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*AccuPayment estimates payments under various scenarios for budgeting and informational purposes only. AccuPayment does not state credit or lease terms that are available from a creditor or lessor, and AccuPayment is not an offer or promotion of a credit or lease transaction.